1779 in literature
# 1779 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1779.

## Events

* April 6 – The premiėre of Iphigenie auf Tauris by Johann Wolfgang Goethe is held at the private Ducal Palace in Weimar.
* October 8 – William Blake enrols as a student with the Royal Academy of Arts at Somerset House in London.

## New books

### Fiction

* Richard Graves – Columella
* Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi – Woldemar
* Ignacy Krasicki – Fables and Parables (Bajki i przypowieści)
* Nocturnal Revels
* Samuel Jackson Pratt as "Courtney Melmoth"
   * Shenstone-Green
   * The Tutor of Truth
* The Sorrows of Werther (anonymous translation of a Johann Wolfgang von Goethe work)

### Children

* Joachim Heinrich Campe – Robinson der Jüngere (based on Defoe)

### Drama

* Fanny Burney – The Witlings (unpublished)
* Hannah Cowley
   * Albina, Countess Raimond
   * Who's the Dupe
* Richard Cumberland – Calypso
* Hugh Downman – Lucius Junius Brutus
* Jean-Pierre Claris de Florian – Les Deux Billets
* William Hodson – Zoraida
* Robert Jephson – The Law of Lombardy
* Gotthold Ephraim Lessing – Nathan der Weise (published)
* Richard Brinsley Sheridan – The Critic

### Poetry

* William Cowper and John Newton – Olney Hymns
* Robert Fergusson – Poems
* William Hayley – Epistle to Admiral Keppel
* Ann Murry – Poems
* Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos – Epístola de Jovino a Anfriso, escrita desde el Paular
* Leandro Fernandez de Moratín – La toma de Granada por los Reyes Católicos don Fernando y doña Isabel
* Tomás de Iriarte – La música

### Non-fiction

* John Abercrombie – The British Fruit Gardener and Art of Pruning
* Anna Barbauld – Lessons for Children
* James Burnett – Antient Metaphysics
* Edward Capell – Notes and Various Readings to Shakespeare
* George Chalmers – Political Annals of the Present United Colonies
* Edward Gibbon – A Vindication of Some Passages in the History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
* David Hume (died 1776; anonymously) – Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion
* Samuel Johnson – Prefaces, Biographical and Critical, to the Works of the English Poets
* Vicessimus Knox – Essays
* Franz Mesmer – Mémoire sur la découverte du magnétisme animal
* John Moore – A View of Society and Manners in France, Switzerland, and Germany
* Thomas Scott – The Force of Truth
* Horace Walpole – A Letter to the Editor of the Miscellanies of Thomas Chatterton

## Births

* January 18 – Peter Mark Roget, English lexicographer (died 1869)
* March 1 – Gottfried Weber, German writer on music (died 1839)
* March 3 – Matthäus Casimir von Collin, Austrian poet and dramatist (died 1824)
* March 10 – Frances Trollope (born Frances Milton), English novelist and writer (died 1863)
* March 30 – Antoine Ó Raifteiri, Irish Gaelic poet (died 1835)
* May 2 – John Galt, Scottish novelist and entrepreneur (died 1839)
* May 28 – Thomas Moore, Irish poet and songwriter (died 1852)
* August 1 – Francis Scott Key, American poet (died 1843)
* September 10 – Alexander Voeykov, Russian poet (died 1839)
* November 14 – Adam Oehlenschläger, Danish Romantic poet and dramatist (died 1850)
* December 22 – Thomas Gaisford, English classicist (died 1855)
* December 31 – Horace (Horatio) Smith, English poet and novelist (died 1849)

## Deaths

* January 20 – David Garrick, English dramatist, actor and impresario (born 1717)
* March 4 – Heinrich Leopold Wagner, German dramatist (born 1747)
* June 7 – William Warburton, English writer, critic and cleric (born 1698)
* June 10 – William Kenrick, English novelist, playwright and satirist (born c. 1725)
* July 10 – Jane Gomeldon, English essayist and writer of maxims (born c. 1720)
* July 21 – Caleb Fleming, English minister and pamphleteer (born 1698)
* November 16 – Pehr Kalm, Swedish/Finnish botanist, naturalist and travel writer (born 1716)
* December 22 – István Küzmics (Števan Küzmič), Hungarian writer in Prekmurje Slovene (Wendish) (born c. 1723)
